Peekskill, New York: Anti-Communist Riot Blocks Robeson Concert
Anti-Communist vigilantes attacked concert-goers on this day with baseball bats and rocks, and blocked a concert in Peekskill, New York (Westchester County), that featured the noted African-American singer and leftist activist Paul Robeson.
Robeson was also a prominent left-wing activist who was very critical of U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War. The concert on this day was to be a fundraiser for the left-wing Civil Rights Congress, founded on April 27, 1946, which had been included on the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations (see March 21, 1947; December 4, 1947).
An effigy of Robeson was lynched by members of the mob and a cross was set on fire.
The concert was rescheduled concert and successfully held on September 4, 1949.
Robeson was an extraordinary individual who excelled in several different fields over the course of his life. At Rutgers College he starred in football and was twice name an All-American. After graduating from Rutgers as his Class Valedictorian, he attended and graduated from Columbia University Law School. His greatest success and national fame came as a singer and actor. He had a magnificent voice and eventually recorded 276 songs. As an actor, he won acclaim by starring in both stage and film versions of Show Boat. In the 1930s he became more active in leftist politics and supported the Loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War. After World War II he led an appeal to the United Nations over racial discrimination in America. Although his political views became increasingly aligned with the Soviet Union, he never officially joined the Communist Party. He was investigated by the House Un-American activities, denied a passport because of his political views, and blacklisted as a performer.
Robeson’s singing career was destroyed by the Cold War. The government revoked his passport on August 4, 1950, thereby denying him lucrative singing engagements overseas. (On May 26, 1957, however, he gave a concert by telephone to an audience in London.) In the U.S., meanwhile, he was the victim of a blacklist that denied him all but a few concert opportunities.
Read: Howard Fast, Peekskill, U.S.A. (1951, reprinted 2006)
Learn more about Robeson: Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson (1989)
Watch newsreel footage of the Peekskill riot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pgyACdT1rM
Documents, photos, songs about Peekskill: http://www.antiwarsongs.org/canzone.php?id=42134&lang=en
Hear Paul Robeson sing “Ole Man River” from Showboat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh9WayN7R-s